I love Halloween basically for one reason.
It’s not the costumes, which put more pressure on me than Christmas ever could.
No, it’s the fact that it’s suddenly ok to talk about horror movies to anyone.
In fact, people BEG me to talk about horror movies during October.
Zombie movies hold a special place in my heart and, while the recent upsurge can be annoying to some, I'm secretly pretty happy about it.
After all, what better creature is there to serve as biting social commentary?
As Mr. Romero says, "They are us."
Oh, and there's the gut-churning gore.
There are those out there who will tell you that there are no good zombie movies that don’t have the word “Romero” attached to them. Au contrare, my little ones. There are PLENTY of good zombie movies. Maybe no award winners, but you may have heard of a little movie called 28 Days Later that (most) everyone loved. (Arguably not REALLY a zombie movie, but whatever. For me it still counts.)
Here are just a few that you may have missed over the years. Romero’s are still the best, but these are worth a look or six.
GRAPES OF DEATH (1978)
Directed by Jean Rollin
Written by Jean Rollin/Jean-Pierre Bouyxou/Christian Meunier
Never has there been a more desolate zombie film made in France.
A young woman travelling the French countryside with a friend ends up alone in wine country with people infected with some kind of wine-transmitted virus chasing after her. Loneliness and sadness saturate the film all the way through to the final shot. Sure, some of the dialogue is kind of contrived (the conversation about the war is seriously only there to tell us that there’s a nuclear power plant and a military base nearby), but the mood of the film just never lets up. These people have never been truly happy and neither has the land. Jean Rollin is no Romero and this could be his only good film (his other films mainly exist for soft-core boobie shots and this film doesn’t skimp on the nudity), but it is a great movie that doesn’t just revel in the gore…although it has some pretty good puss-filled wounds throughout.
TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1972)
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Written by Amando de Ossorio/Jesus Navarro Carrion
Shortly after Night Of The Living Dead came out in 1968, everyone wanted to get in on the zombie action. Spain made the genre their own by bringing the Knights Templar into the proceedings. Tombs starts off with a young girl jumping off of a train to run away from her former best friend and the man she’s interested in because it looks like they’re about to hook up. Unfortunately, she runs right into the titular knights. When her two friends come looking for her all hell breaks loose.
The characters are stupid and unsympathetic and there isn’t a lot of gore to be seen, but there is something highly disturbing about these zombies, and it’s not just the super-creepy chanted score. They don’t move very fast at all and they’re not nearly as disgusting as a Romero ghoul, but these rotting skeletons with beards really do get under your skin as the chomp on these awful people. The ending manages to be both silly and chilling at the same time. The three sequels get progressively more graphic and decrease in quality, but they’re still a lot of fun in a slowly disturbing way.
Beware the American version that, for some reason, recasts the knights as apes.
THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE (aka, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE) (1974)
Directed by Jorge Grau
Written by Sandro Continenza/Marcello Coscia/Juan Cobos/Miguel Rubio
For the other two 70s movies I’ve made some excuses. “Yeah, they’re not really good movies, but they’re great zombie movies!” Well, no such excuses are needed for The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue. If you like your zombie movies dark, gory and with a side of social commentary, this movie is for you.
Two young people on the English countryside stumble upon a small town where some new nuclear farming equipment is bringing the dead back to life. (Pesticides are bad.) The cops, of course, don’t believe them, actually believing that they are the ones killing the townsfolk. (The older generation has no faith in the younger generation, thinking they’re all on drugs or worse, Satanists.)
One of the few truly good Video Nasties, this is one of the five or so best non-Romero zombie movies. It also has a nice and nihilistic ending that will stay with you for days.
DANCE OF THE DEAD (2008)
Directed by Gregg Bishop
Written by Joe Ballarini
Just when you think that good, low-budget zombie movies were a thing of the past, Dance Of The Dead comes along. It’s the story of a group of high school kids who find out that the nuclear power plant nearby is causing the dead to rise from their graves to chomp on some brains. What better place to get those brains than at the prom that none of these kids happens to be going to? Can they save the town?
Dance Of The Dead is one of those “fun” zombie movies that not everyone can get into. It’s a comedy, to be sure, but, like Shaun Of The Dead before it, it doesn’t skimp on the gore. It also doesn’t fall into the traps that a lot of teen comedies fall into. These kids are all sympathetic in their own ways and none of them are worthless.
Keep in mind: Dance Of The Dead has fast AND slow zombies. Strangely enough, it makes sense and works really well.
Oh yeah, and no one is safe…ever. The movie also answers the question, “What happens when two zombies fall in love?”
HAROLD’S GOING STIFF (2011)
Written and directed by Keith Wright
Mockumentaries are overdone these days. Everybody’s made one about subjects far and wide. Some are farcical, some are serious, many are terrible.
Luckily, Harold’s Going Stiff is quite good.
Apparently a new disease is taking over the men of rural England: ORD, Onset Rigors Disease. It basically causes your joints to stiffen up. Eventually, though, you start to lose your brain, too, and you become violent. Harold was the first to contract the disease and he has somehow been in stage one for years. His nurse, Penny, is a young woman who has been finding it hard to find a good man. Harold is her only true friend and is like a grandfather to her.
Unlike a lot of zombie movies, Harold’s Going Stiff is kind of a heartbreaker. It’s funny and could be counted as a comedy, but the soul of the film is these two characters being lonely and finding out just how much they need each other. Not a lot of gore (in face, none that I can remember), just a lot of heart.
Unfortunately, this movie seems to only be available on a UK import DVD right now. Hopefully we can get them to release it in America. It’s one of the better zombie flicks made in the last 10 years.
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